Show HN: I built a spreadsheet app with Python to make data science easier

https://hackernoon.com/introducing-grid-studio-a-spreadsheet-app-with-python-to-make-data-science-easier-tdup38f7

by ricklamers • 7 years ago

84 15 7 years ago

pplonski86• 7 years ago

Congratulations on launching! I had a similar feeling that there is a missing tool, which will allow to code and see data at the same time. I have started doing some sketches of the app very similar to yours.

In my opinion Spreadsheets and Jupyter have many advantages and disadvantages - by combining both, there can be a nice tool for data science.

It will be nice to add more examples to your app.

ricklamers5• 7 years ago

Thank you for the kind words. I'll be adding more examples in the future and think of a better way to make them shareable (like Jupyter .ipynb files).

thenaturalist• 7 years ago

Fantastic work, congratulations!

ricklamers5• 7 years ago

It means a lot, thanks!

dwrodri• 7 years ago

Relevant alternative catering to Vim users: http://visidata.org/

rabidrat• 7 years ago

There is another, more fundamental difference between VisiData and spreadsheet apps like this one: being column-oriented (as opposed to cell-oriented). Cell-oriented spreadsheets are great for one-off calculations and creating a visual workflow that fits onto a single sheet, but when you get into larger datasets, you almost always want to work with columns as first-class entities. Individual cells and arbitrary cell ranges are difficult to work with at scale, with data larger than a couple hundred rows.

Also, being cell-oriented makes the spreadsheet not immediately interoperable with other data tools like pandas and R/tidyverse. No single tool will handle all use cases, so it's important to keep the data in its highest-potential form, so that other tools can work their magic without having to reorganize the data first.

So I'm glad that Grid Studio is bringing Python to the web, and I hope they consider going one further and integrating a column-oriented architecture. Otherwise using VisiData or pandas directly will still be your best option for working efficiently with larger datasets.

ricklamers5• 7 years ago

Interesting perspective about column v.s. cell oriented spreadsheets applications.

Someone has opened an issue on GitHub for something related. I'll be investigating how to get the best of both world with proper integration of Pandas column oriented world view and the ability to directly edit individual cells!

I_complete_me• 7 years ago

Heartiest congratulations on the birth of your brain-child. This is something I wanted for a good while. Will definitely dive into it.

ricklamers5• 7 years ago

Good to hear that it's something you want!

I have to say, it's been quite the emotional ride to release this project. Even now I'm constantly embarrassed, it's stupid how bad I feel about so many parts of it (incompleteness, code quality, lack of proper parsing grammar, list continues ad infinitum).

Release early release often they say, that's definitely easier said then done!

sjoebergco• 7 years ago

Nice work, cool idea, congratulations on launching!

slowmotarget• 7 years ago

I see a great potential for cleaning CRM data with this tool. Nicely done!

bencollier49• 7 years ago

This is very similar to Resolver One, which launched about 14 years ago.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolver_One

based2• 7 years ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/ci311t/how_i_b...

https://github.com/ricklamers/gridstudio

https://github.com/quigleyj97/jupyterlab-spreadsheet

sherbondy• 7 years ago

Nice! Looks like a kindred spirit to “Flowsheets”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1Ca5czOY7Q

But broadly usable in the here and now! Excited to try it out!

ricklamers5• 7 years ago

Some of the feedback I've gotten was along the lines of: make a SaaS version to make it easy to run (i.e. not having to install it locally).

I'm happy with it just being an open source project but I recognize that a SaaS hosted version could be interesting to some people who want to run it in the cloud without hassle. And second, it could provide me with some income to be able to continue support/develop the open source project in the long run.

I've set up an initial version https://dashboard.gridstudio.io based on an API integration with DigitalOcean droplets.

All feedback is very welcome! If someone has a particular love for pen-testing, let me know if I dropped the ball somewhere ^^.

Show HN: I built a spreadsheet app with Python to make data science easier

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